Respite
by Glass Vial
Summary: The Doctor isn't in the mood to face his death just yet. After the events on Mars and the appearance of Ood Sigma, he flees in the TARDIS. He knows that he's gone too far, and to make amends he's off to do as much as possible to make up for that.
1. Prologue

_"But you said we die. For the future. For the human race!"_

_"Yes, because there are laws. There are laws of time. Once upon of time there were people in charge of those laws but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!"_

He wondered, briefly, if he had gone completely insane.

_"Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before. In small ways, saved some little people. But never someone as important as you. Ooh, I'm good!"_

He remembered the look of disgust that had flickered across the Captain's face.

_"Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?"_

_"For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. A Time Lord victorious."_

No. He has been wrong. He wasn't the 'Time Lord victorious' at all. He was as broken as ever, but now he could add 'God complex' to his long list of personality traits that had emerged since the Time War and the events that had followed it.

He should have known better. He _did_ know better . . . But for a moment - and a moment, it seems, was all that it had taken - he had ceased to care what was right and wrong.

_"And there's no one to stop you?"_

_"No."_

That much was true. There really was no one left to stop him anymore.

Martha was . . . In fact, he wasn't really that sure where Martha was at this present moment in time. Jack was otherwise occupied - he had heard about the trouble Jack and his team had faced, but had been to late to do anything to help. Donna didn't know that he existed - and that was _heartbreaking_, knowing that if he merely walked past her in the street it could cause her to remember . . . And then that would cause her mind to burn. The Doctor-Donna had been his fault, ultimately.

And then Rose. She had . . . _Him_, he supposed. The Other Doctor was there with her, in the parallel world - they even had their own TARDIS, thanks to his own quick thinking. But somehow, knowing that she was with a man who looked and spoke and behaved and was the same as him in every single way except for the fact that he only had one heart. The Other Doctor was Human.

That had been the only thing stopping him and Rose staying together for the rest of their lives.

If that hadn't killed him, he failed to see what else could.

The Doctor had no one. He was alone - the last of the Time Lords once again. But his time was running out.

_Oh, I'm not finished yet. They're not getting rid of me that easily._ He thought, only half convinced that this was the case. _I went too far . . . But I can atone for that, surely? I just need more _time_!_

He jumped up off the seat, landing in front of the control panel. He set a course with his mind working at double speed. He didn't have to follow Ood Sigma straight away, surely? He had time - he was a Time Lord, of_ course_ he had time!

He would do something good, something _genuinely_ good. He would not let his final act be one of stupidity and selfishness.

He would make things right before his song ended.

He had to.


	2. One

"Oh, Paris!" The Doctor allowed a grin to spread across his face as he saw the view on the screen. The TARDIS hadn't followed his course, but at least he'd landed somewhere nice by accident this time. He hadn't been to Paris since he was . . . In his fourth incarnation, if he remembered rightly. Although he had been to other parts of France since then, of course.

On his way out of the TARDIS he grabbed his coat. He swung the door open . . . And was faced with a courtyard. A frown spread across his features, and he walked back in to look at the scanner screen.

"That's definitely Paris on there . . ." He muttered to himself. He wasn't sure how long he'd developed the habit of talking to himself, but now was not the time to think about it. "Right, you," He addressed the TARDIS itself now. "Stop being stupid. I am clearly not on the Champ de Mars. I am not going to walk out there and see the Eiffel Tower." He grabbed the hammer, simply to hit the console in an attempt to get his point across.

The room was quiet after that, apart from the soft and constant groan of the ancient machinery. The Doctor sighed.

"Is there a reason I'm inside someone's house?" There was no reply, of course, because he was addressing a machine. Not a particularly ordinary machine, of course, just one that felt like being highly uncooperative. That seemed to be enough for him, though, because he tugged his coat on and left.

He looked around the courtyard and spotted an open door, and as was oh so typical of him he set off towards that.

When the Doctor walked through the door he was greeted by a very bemused looking man. Said man had been in the process of shaving, and the razor had come to a stop just by his cheek. He looked as though he was in either is late thirties or his mid forties - slight wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth and deeper ones along his forehead, and hair going grey but in that oddly dignified manner that only men of status manage to achieve. But mostly what gave it away was his eyes. The Doctor knew how to spot a man who had seen too much. This man, his reflection blinking at him from the mirror, had eyes that were much older than the rest of him.

But he would enquire as to why at a later time.

"Hello!" The Doctor addressed the man brightly, with that trademark grin he so often used as his get out of jail free card.

"What are you doing in my house?"

"Oh, this is your house, is it? Your courtyard looks lovely, I must say."

"Sir, I'm afraid I must ask you to leave." The razor had ended up discarded in the sink by this point, and he had spun around to face the Doctor. "You're trespassing on my property and -"

"I am sorry," He cut him off. "I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. I'm a bit . . . Lost, you see. I just sort of . . . Ended up here."

The man regarded his intruder with those ancient eyes, sizing him up.


End file.
